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    Startups Weekly Feedback and Support Thread

    December 25, 2018

    Startups Weekly Feedback and Support Thread

    Weekly Feedback and Support Thread

    Posted: 24 Dec 2018 03:08 AM PST

    Create something? Let's see it!

    Feedback or Support Requester

    Please use the following format:

    URL:

    Purpose of Startup:

    Technologies Used:

    Feedback or Support Requested:

    Comments:

    Post your site along with your stack and technologies used and receive feedback from the community. Please refrain from just posting a link and instead give us a bit of a background about your creation.

    Feel free to request general feedback or specific feedback in a certain area like user experience, usability, design, or code review.

    Feel free to request support with hiring talent, finding a job/clients, recruiting a co-founder, getting your pitch deck made, or anything objective based that is specific to your startup.

    You can also receive advice and feedback in instant chat using the /r/startups discord.

    Feedback Providers

    • Please post constructive feedback. Simply saying, "That's good" or "That's bad" is useless feedback. Explain why.

    • Consider providing concrete feedback about the problem rather than the solution. Saying, "get rid of red buttons" doesn't explain the problem. Saying "your site's success message being red makes me think it's an error" provides the problem. From there, suggest solutions.

    • Be specific. Vague feedback rarely helps.

    • Again, focus on why.

    • Always be respectful

    • /r/startups would appreciate your expertise on our discord.

    Support Providers

    • Please post some background information about yourself and why you're capable of providing support

    • Feel free to share a relevant URL

    • Be extremely clear what you are offering your support in exchange for: money, equity, barter/trade of services/products, or a mix of those--or if you are volunteering your support for free

    submitted by /u/AutoModerator
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    From a sucky accounting job to doing $1.4 million dollars a year with my mobile app 4 years after launch! (And I can't write a single line of code). How I did it, and what’s next!

    Posted: 24 Dec 2018 11:04 AM PST

    Pull up a chair family!

    I'm going to peel back the layers to show that this stuff is actually doable. And while we're not making 10's of millions like some other apps yet, I think we have a real path to get there. We're growing at a measured and manageable rate, are completely bootstrapped, have not taken on a penny of investment, have zero debt, healthy margins, and own 100% of the company.

    This is a post on how I did it.

    (Read time: ~15 minutes).

    Revenue upfront: (Had an imgur link to revenue but mods made me remove it) (You can click the links and see our numbers updated in real time as well on baremetrics. I know the skepticism is real on Reddit lol.)

    QUICK BACKSTORY AND HOW I FIGURE OUT WHAT TO BUILD!

    So I wanted to build an app for a local service business. i.e An app that cleaning companies and lawncare companies and painting companies etc. would use. I already owned a local service business and felt I could create something that first would be a tool that I could use and then make it available for other people if it worked out. (Super awesome if you could be customer #1 for what you're building).

    Anyhow, when appraising an idea I use this point system I came up with and assign points based on the following metrics:

    1) 10 points if there is a LOT of competition doing the same thing
    2) 10 points if you can point to folks making MILLIONS!
    3) 10 points if it's a service/software instead of product
    4) 10 points if you can get customers 60 days from now
    5) 10 points if there is a chance for automatic recurring revenue
    6) 10 points if the price of the thing is over $50
    7) 10 points if the thing is unsexy, boring, but people NEED it
    8) 10 points if it's something you've bought yourself
    9) 10 points if the thing is less than 13 ozs (If it's a product) or you can divorce it from your time if it's a service .
    10) 10 points if you can explain what it is in 5 words and a 5 year old would understand.

    Closest to 100 wins!

    So in my case building an app for local service companies scored a 90 on this scale. The only thing missing was that it would take a little more than 60 days to get our first customer, but because I was already running a local business and had put out a ton of content around local, I already had customers lined up even before the first version of the product was complete. ←- Can't stress how important this is, and you'll see why soon.

    OKAY SO HERE'S WHAT I DID TO GET MOVING:

    STEP 1: FIND A TECHNICAL CO-FOUNDER
    If you can code you can skip this step and code that bad boy yourself, but I knew I would need a technical co-founder. I reached out to a friend whose husband was a developer, and told him what I wanted to build. At first he wasn't interested, so I decided to do it myself (not like I'm going to live forever lol) and made a post on Upwork to find a developer. My taking action on it changed his mind, and he came on board, things worked out, and he has since quit his job and works on the app full time.

    STEP 2: FINDING A DEVELOPER
    Upwork. That's it. I made a post, outlining what I was looking for and tried to find the single best person I could find with the most completed projects and the highest ratings. They started out at $35 per hour. Bonus if you can give them a small project first to make sure they complete things on schedule, communicate well, have good availability etc. But once we figure that out, it's on. Our investment (and the only investment we ever made) was $5,000 each between me and my partner.

    STEP 3: CREATE SPECS
    This doesn't have to be a really complicated process in the beginning. I simply put together how I wanted things to flow with a few screenshots for visual aids and explanation and that was that. It helps to go through every single app you can find in the space to get some ideas. Here's the actual "specs" I wrote out that the developer started with: >>> (Had an imgur link to specs but mods made me remove it)

    Of course as things got going we got more complex, but this was legit how things started.

    STEP 4: LAUNCH CONTENT

    You need content. I don't care what you're selling. I never launch a business with ads. Instead by creating a content around the product you can start a two-way conversation with your audience, get to figure out what they are looking for, what makes them tick, and start to build your audience. I had put out a ton of content on local a WHOLE year before the app was even conceived (contrary to what folks with fuzzy memories think) and then started to put out more when I knew it was going to be a thing.

    STEP 5: FINDING FIRST CUSTOMERS

    If you made sure you're building something that people need, if you've nurtured and connected with those folks for months before the launch, have put out solid content, and have kept folks excited along the way, you WILL get customers on launch day. But your app isn't going to be beautiful yet (and you shouldn't wait until it's beautiful to launch), and folks won't mind as long as the main functions are there.

    So what I said was:

    1) We're going to be pricing this product at $x price per month.
    2) We're going to be adding a ton of features
    3) Sign up now while it's still ugly at a discounted price, like 60% of $x and you'll be grandfathered in at that price forever and take advantage of all the sweet updates and additional features at no additional cost.

    This works like a charm!

    IMPORTANT: So the revenue from first customers pays for ongoing development and we never had to put any more money into the platform!!!!!

    STEP 6: NOT WORRYING ABOUT IDEA GETTING STOLEN

    See the first section in Step 5. You can't do this by trying to build in secret. As a matter of fact when I'm building something I want to tell as many people as possible to get feedback, get buy-in, and making sure I"m not building into a black hole. I want people anxiously waiting and knocking down my door before the thing is even done. Building it in secret (and nobody is waiting to buy at launch) is a much bigger risk to me than any thoughts of the "idea being stolen".

    STEP 7: THE STORY-TELLING ARC

    Beyond launch content it's incredibly important to tell the story of the brand. Every brand story is different, but there are certain stories that really resonates with people. Think of how many brands that tell their story of having "started in a garage". If this is your story, don't hesitate to tell it. People often buy story more than they buy the actual thing. Be transparent and honest and human and your thing will connect. Here's a tiny bit of the story telling arc around myself and this project >>> (Had an imgur link to storytelling arc but mods made me remove it)

    STEP 8: BUILDING COMMUNITY

    So as we put out content, told our story, worked on the app, and folks on our platform started to see success, we knew we had to build a community. For us, and I think this is critical, we look to build a Facebook group or subreddit or forum or whatever we can think of for any product or service we put out. This helps with feedback, first adopters, testers for new features, and folks help each other out thus helping with customer support. And of course folks post their results which acts as inspiration for everyone else.

    Step 9: TESTIMONIAL MARKETING

    By now you have folks on the app that are doing well, you need testimonials. Think of going to a restaurant without first checking out their Yelp reviews. Or watching a movie without checking out Rotten Tomatoes (well this is me at least haha). But this is human. People need to know that other people use it and are happy with it.

    There are multiple types of testimonials but the ones that work best for us are these:

    Type 1: More serious Video testimonials (We just hire a videographer on Craigslist for like $150 in our customer's city and send them to our client's home so it looks professional). Don't want to post one of these because it's too much like an ad.

    Type 2: More fun: Video testimonials (One of our clients and my friend just did this on her iphone with a random dude recording in the park LOL) (Had a link to video but mods made me remove it)

    Type 3: Candid - Screenshots from our Facebook group to show community and that folks help each other.

    STEP 10) WEBINAR MARKETING

    This is just another more formal way of telling your brand story, showing testimonials, highlighting your community, and extending your brand. So at this point you have all those items in place, and a webinar presentation allows you to wrap everything up in a nice neat bow for people live and in real time.

    Here is a snippet of actual slides from one of our webinars:

    (Had a link to a short snipped of slides but mods made me remove it)

    DEMOGRAPHICS;

    So a lot of our first customers were from Reddit but we've since grown so far beyond that. Folks on the app sell everything local imaginable, from cleaning to bike repair, to auto detailing, to even babysitting and we have a ton of existing companies that came over from other platforms.

    So that's the core of the thing and I'm happy to answer any questions I can answer on this process. There are a gazillion opportunities to build improvements on existing apps by niching down into one particular vertical, by niching down by location, or in some other way. Not everything has to be "super scaleable $100 million dollar home-run".

    I'm sure many of you have the skills to build a simple app, bring in a nice 6 or 7 figure check every year, and go sit on the beach somewhere if you would like.

    2019 is as good a year as any to make it happen!

    And as usual I like to post the companies we use when I post these case studies but mods made me remove the list.

    Yep, 2019 is the year I get into the fitness space. Stay tuned...😉

    So I know reddit is the land of cynics, naysayers, back-seat drivers etc. I tried to remove anything from this that even seems like an ad for the app (If I missed something let me know and I'll remove that too), but Im not going to spend my xmas eve going back and forth with random weird stuff, lol I'd rather just delete it and go play spades or something. lol

    But if you have any questions on the development process, time to first customers, ramping things up, sales, marketing, how we approach growing it, content distribution, or anything like that fire away and I'll respond!

    submitted by /u/localcasestudy
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    Sell business with FAANG customer

    Posted: 24 Dec 2018 02:17 PM PST

    I run a business that I'm interested in selling. My business has most of it's value in a contract with one of the FAANG companies. I figure it could be worth quite a bit to other businesses/startups who wants to get a foot in the door with a company of this size plus a solid income stream.

    The business in question is a SAAS and is incorporated in Europe. Its run 100% online and has no employees.

    I have never sold a business before, any ideas of how I could go about finding a buyer of my company?

    Would be happy for any suggestions, links, advice etc.

    submitted by /u/mosquitohammer
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    So here I am... Can you comment on my plan?

    Posted: 24 Dec 2018 05:17 AM PST

    Hi guys!

    Merry Christmass and all that stuff ;)

    So here I am - I am thirty-something old with over 16 years in IT, out of which majority (12-13) in project/operations management. I was working in shitty startups, corporations and all that jazz in the middle and I am tired. I decided that on my next birthday I will have something of my own or at least I will fail trying. And here is my question - what else should I be doing. Stay with me on the steps I did and I am planning to take:

    1. I have my project idea that was verified by the customers, potential users as well as investors (no agreement signed yet)
    2. I have a buffer for 3-6 months of work - the end of Q2 2019 will be my go-nogo point
    3. I have the project team that is currently working on a proof of concept for me - two developers, designers, security spec and me
    4. I have a goal for Q1 2019 to prepare:
    5. A working PoC - in progress,
    6. A landing page with a demo - in progress - cosmetic changes,
    7. A business plan - in progress,
    8. Financial projections (for 2-3 years) - in progress,
    9. A pitch deck - pending
    10. Where deck will be outsourced to someone who knows what to do there - I have a budget of 3-5K USD for that (eastern Europe here, so should be doable), business and finance plan will be reviewed by someone with experience as well
    11. When I will have it all ready I will approach the initial VC with the idea and all the links and idea pitch

    What I am afraid:

    1. This is the first time I am doing it - and I do not know if I haven't missed anything significant - I know there will be changes/pivots in the project and I am ok with that - we can adjust.
    2. How can I hit the VC with the idea so that I will be noticed?
    3. How can I get into the best ones - with my presence being in eastern Europe?
    4. How can I handle my most significant risks - marketing - as I do not have anyone with enough experience and I can imagine that this will be extremely hard to find?

    I did a lot of reading, I reviewed a lot of videos (Y Combinator, etc.) but is there something that can prepare me for it?

    ​

    EDIT:

    My TODO got a bit bigger after reading your comments:

    1. Do research on the founding in EU
    2. Release the tool and get the users in!
    3. Do research on marketing - how to acquire users and try to use this knowledge!
    4. Read the four steps to epiphany
    5. Skip the pitch deck and get initial users in!
    submitted by /u/tzimek
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    Are there any mobile apps people can make that are low risk low reward in terms of revenue?

    Posted: 25 Dec 2018 01:55 AM PST

    Not just being hired to write an app for somebody else and being paid for your time. Is there a boring app you can make that will virtually guarantee you $2000 or $5000 a year?

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    submitted by /u/WarAndGeese
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    Can’t get traction to prove out my MVP

    Posted: 24 Dec 2018 07:44 PM PST

    I'm trying to prove that there's a market for an app I want to develop.

    I have developed a full web version of the app, it's not very polished and a bit buggy but it's fully featured and represents a rough version of what the final app would be.

    I myself had acid reflux issues and had a hard time keeping track of symptoms and correlating them to what I ate. This app is pretty much a food and symptom app that builds a basic report showing the correlation.

    I've had a good amount of interest and had 50ish people sign up to my mailing list to learn more. When the beta web version was available I emailed everyone on the list and only had 3 people sign up.

    I can't seem to get any traction or anyone actually using the website to prove the reports are valid or that there is interest in this

    It helped me so I thought it could help others. Do I have a dud on my hands?

    submitted by /u/western_daedalus
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    Hiring freelancer to build MVP - best way to deal with taxes?

    Posted: 24 Dec 2018 09:25 PM PST

    I'm going to use freelancers to build a web app MVP. There will also be other minor costs (registering a domain, hosting, email etc.) I will be using my savings - what is the best way to approach this financially?

    There are no plans to monetize my startup in the near future.

    (Also I currently reside in Canada.)

    There seems to be a lot of tax advice for freelancers online, but I can't really find too much about startups hiring freelancers.

    Does anyone have any advice, experience, and/or reading materials for this?

    submitted by /u/throwaway0144
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    What is the best way to find a right fit co-founder?

    Posted: 24 Dec 2018 02:42 PM PST

    Dear all, we are currently in the process of building our team around a very young startup. As any startup cash is a challenge and therefore we expect from our co-founders to work on equity base only, until we have found our first round of real financing. The little seed capital we have been able to collect from FFF (family, friends and fools), we want to fully use it to develop our MVP, experiment and hopefully find our fist customers.

    We have written a very transparent job description, which states "no fixed salary yet" and "significant equity stake". We have posted the JD via Facebook and LinkedIn. So far the response rate is very reasonable. However we would really like to hear your view on this, as this is the first time we are looking for co-founders like this. Is this the right way to approach it? Should we use other channels? We had some intense discussion with some other experienced entrepreneurs who advised us to only look for co-founders in our close network, as this is like entering into a long term marriage... What do you think??

    submitted by /u/smkry05
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    Is it wise or unwise to display the number of users on your webapp?

    Posted: 24 Dec 2018 08:20 AM PST

    When designing marketing verbiage for a webapp (or any company for that matter), is it a good idea or a bad idea to display how many paying users the webapp has?

    I would think a positive might be that it better convinces visitors to sign up. Something like, "Join the other 15,421 paying users!" would probably give the visitor more confidence to sign up.

    But a negative might be that competitors would know what your numbers are. Or someone else might be more persuaded to start a clone company after seeing how many paying users your webapp has.

    Thoughts? Are my positive/negative thoughts unfounded?

    submitted by /u/zachrodgers
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